After the arrest of Julian Assange by British police and the unsealing of the U.S. indictment against him, the question is why is the U.S. doing this and why now?

The indictment alleges that Assange 'conspired' with Chelsea Manning by giving support to her attempt to find a password to an account that would have allowed her to conceal her pilfering of U.S. documents. Glenn Greenwald argues that the case is quite thin and clearly an attack on press freedom. That a reporter or editor has to help a source to conceal its identity is part of the job description.

The Obama administration, not known for reluctance to go after whistleblowers, had already weighed the 'conspired' case and decided against prosecuting it.

It is thus likely that the case, as unsealed now, is only a pretext to extradite Assange from Britain. The real case will only get unsealed if and when Assange is in U.S. custody.

National security reporter William Arkin, who left NBC Newsover its warmongering, is likely right when he writes that the issue behind this is Wikileaks' publishing of the CIA's hacking tools known as Vault 7.

While the publishing of the Vault 7 files received little coverage in the media, it seriously damaged the CIA's capabilities. Arkin wrote on April 11 about the Vault 7 connection. The Guardian and the Daily Beast were offered the piece but declined to publish it:

The American case, which shifted completely in March 2017, is based up WikiLeaks’ publications of the so-called “Vault 7” documents, an extensive set of cyber espionage secrets of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Vault 7 was little noticed in the emerging Russian collusion scandal of the new Trump administration, but the nearly 10,000 CIA documents that WikiLeaks started publishing that March constituted an unprecedented breach, far more potentially damaging than anything the anti-secrecy website had ever done, according to numerous U.S. officials.

“There have been serious compromises – Manning and Snowden included – but until 2017, no one had laid a glove on the Agency in decades,” says a senior intelligence official who has been directly involved in the damage assessments.

“Then came Vault 7, almost the entire archive of the CIA’s own hacking group,” the official says. “The CIA went ballistic at the breach.” The official is referring to a little known CIA organization called the Center for Cyber Intelligence, a then unknown counterpart to the National Security Agency, and one that conducts and oversees the covert hacking efforts of the U.S. government.

Wikileaks acquired the Vault 7 files in late 2016 or early 2017. In January 2017 a lawyer for Julian Assange tried to make a deal with the U.S. government. Assange would refrain from publishing some critical content of the Vault 7 files in exchange for limited immunity and safe passage to talk with U.S. officials. One issue to be talked about was the sourcing of the DNC files which Wikileaks published. U.S. officials in the anti-Trump camp claimed that Russia had hacked the DNC servers. Assange consistently said that Russia was not the source of the published files. He offered technical evidence to prove that.

On March 23 2017 Wikileaks published some Vault 7 files of minor interest.

The Justice Department wanted a deal and made on offer to Assange. But intervention from then FBI director Comey sabotaged it:

Multiple sources tell me the FBI’s counterintelligence team was aware and engaged in the Justice Department’s strategy but could not explain what motivated Comey to send a different message around the negotiations ...

With the deal seemingly in jeopardy Wikileaks published the CIA's Vault 7 files of "Marble Framework" and "Grasshopper". These CIA tools systematically changed its sniffing tools to make them look "Russian" or "Iranian" by inserting foreign language strings into their source code. The publication proved that the attribution of the DNC pilfering and other "hacks" to Russia was nonsense. The publishing of these files ended all negotiations:

On April 7, 2017, Assange released documents with the specifics of some of the CIA malware used for cyber attacks. It had immediate impact: A furious U.S. government backed out of the negotiations, and then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo slammed WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence service.”

The alleged leaker of the Vault 7 files, one Joshua Schulte, is in U.S. custody but still has not had his day in court. It is likely that the U.S. wants to offer him a deal should he agree to testify against Assange.

In another piece Arkin expands on his first take by setting the case into a wider context:

[C]oming on the heels of massive leaks by Edward Snowden and a group called the Shadow Brokers just months earlier, and given the notoriety WikiLeaks had earned, Vault 7 was the straw that broke the governmental back. Not only was it an unprecedented penetration of the CIA, an organization that had evaded any breach of this type since the 1970’s, but it showed that all of the efforts of the U.S. government after Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden had failed to either deter or catch “millennial leakers.”

The targeting of Assange is not only for revenge, though revenge is surely part of the motive. The wider aim is to shut down on leaking:

The thinking of government officials – current and former – that I’ve talked to is that shutting down WikiLeaks once and for all – or at least separating it from the mainstream media to make it less attractive as a recipient of U.S. government secrets, will at least be one step towards greater internal security.

Assange will first be sentenced in Britain for jumping bail. He will be convicted to some six months of jail. Only after that time will the legal fight about the extradition to the States begin. It may take up to three years.

Assange's greatest hope to escape an extradition is a change of government in Britain:

The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

The time it will take for the extradition case to move through British and EU courts is likely long enough for Labour to win a general election. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge Assange would likely be safe. It is one more reason for the transatlantic establishment to prevent a Corbyn win by all means available to it.

One reason for why now is May's political difficulties over Brexit. She was humiliated by the EU the night before Assange's arrest. It was expected, and she needed a cover-up by other big news. It worked, in as far as nobody much noticed that she's stuck without a solution. Only it wasn't quite as bad a humiliation as she expected. Tusk, Merkel, etc, except Macron, were more helpful than she expected. She could have kept the nuclear blast for another time.

The crook Comey refused because he knew exactly already (through side connections with the DNC directly, or through CroudStrike?) that the DNC files was a leak and not a hack.
That's why he never wanted to investigate, why he never wanted to talk to Assange.
His problem is that pretty soon he'll have some explaining to do in this area.
"Nobody is above the law!".

Seems like Assange is getting the international version of diesel therapy, where US federal prisoners are tossed into vans and transported around the countryside for days or weeks at a time. Meanwhile no one knows where they are and the prisoner is completely shut off from the rest of the world. Assange could very well spend many more years being shuttled from one prison to another, in various nations, and never come to trial.

Folks may recall a fatal version of diesel therapy performed by the Baltimore Police a few years ago. A young man was shackled but unsecured in the back of a van, which was driven in a manner that fatally slammed him into the sides of the prisoner compartment.

Not that I know a lot about the Assange case, but I do wonder whether the coup is not beginning to go wrong. Obviously the plan was to extradite Assange on a light accusation, worth 5 years, and then add in more when he was in the US. I thought the US was too fast in declaring their intention to extradite. Now there's a big movement in Britain that the sex accusations are more important than the light US demand, and that Assange should be extradited to Sweden. Difficult to resist. The continuation of the Swedish accusations, not yet renewed, doesn't mean condemnation. We could end up with a situation where the Swedish case fails, but the US demand is insufficient for extradition. Uncertain, but it could go that way.

You know what doesn't jive here: What does Chelsea Manning who was free after a commuted sentence, and being illegally surveilled by Trump's Justice have to do with Vault 7, that happened WHILE she was in prison, and why was she surveilled by this admin's justice anyway, hauled before a grand jury, and after refusing to give up the goods on Assange, thrown into solitary confinement for supposedly a leak that happened WHILE she was serving a sentence for the Iraq leak...hello??? This makes no sense!

Cranking up the Russiagate us/them bullshet narrative with this is really disingenuous and tiresome. ALL ARE GUILTY AS SIN AND ESPECIALLY PRECIOUS DEAR 'OL TRUMP under whose watch all this is going down.

You think the U.K. is going to let Assange serve his term and then have Corbyn stop the extradition? I don't know whether to laugh or cry? First of all they're going to find a way to ensure he will face extradition from prison since he is a flight risk, and now more than ever Corbyn is going to face an iron wall of subversion. Watch closely. For starters, Corbyn is going to be dragged through London with a Scarlet letter on his chest spelling ANTI-SEMITE.

So that's it? We're not pointing to the ironic elephant in the room, the fact that Trump shut down the ICC investigation into U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time that Manning and Assange are behind bars. No, this inconvenient coincidence doesn't fit the U.S./Russia narrative, so let's pretend it's no big deal!

American police and security agencies have a history of vindictive revenge, and once Assange is in their hands he will never see the light of day again. The idea he would have anything approaching a "day in court" in the US is naive and mistaken. Assange's defence will play out in the extradition proceedings, but even if he is somehow successful there he will remain in danger of an extraordinary rendition. I believe the fix is in - this arrest was coordinated between Britain, US and Ecuador over many months, and probably an unseemly hasty extradition proceeding will occur soon enough.

Circe @10
The same thought about why they would be going after Manning if this is about Vault 7 went thru my head as I read this. Maybe they really want Assange over the Vault 7 release but don't have a good legal reason to convict him on that. This is the Outlaw Empire. They never need legal reasons to do anything else they do. Why would they care about the law in the case of Assange? They can just disappear him. They already have their Mockingbird press disparaging Assange.

That's a good rant, but not more than that. By the way, do Americans understand the English usage "rant", which I've never seen in an American context. It means a download of your feelings, without them necessarily being related to reality.

The fact that there are leaks of sensitive information coming from the security agencies suggests that they are not monolithic blocks of employees with no internal dissent. For every person who sends information to Wikileaks, there must be many others who sympathize, but are unwilling to risk their careers by doing something similar. No doubt the top management is aware of this. They must at least make some attempt to reassure the (naively)idealistic employees that the agencies are not Murder Incorporated, working for the Venetian Oligarchy or whatever...

They probably feel some pressure to let the "white hat" faction win against the "black hat" faction occasionally, just to pretend that the agencies are not completely corrupt. To this end they may be sacrificing a few "rogue" elements such as Comey or Brennan or whoever. The cover story will be that they let their political affiliations affect their judgement, and had to be corrected.

The same applies to the citizens in general. It is after all, a democratic constitutional republic right? Or at least that is the image that must be maintained. The danger of not doing something would be to further radicalize dissent in the United States, with results that are unpredictable...

James Comey wanted to keep Assange from testifying for obvious reasons. The permanent deep state management is willing to sacrifice him and others, since it is by now obvious to the (Fox News watching)public that something went terribly wrong. So Comey and McCabe and a few useful idiots get flushed, Assange goes into a black hole(or makes a deal), and the circus continues!

I recall coming across that variation on "diesel therapy" TT describes @ 5 in a book I read 20 years ago written by an American author whose name I forget but who was making a minor reputation at the time detailing political and constitutional abuses in the US in a series of books. All I can remember of the writer now is that he was politically libertarian.

That version in which prisoners are handcuffed and then thrown into the empty back of the police paddy-wagon, and the police car then deliberately driven at varying speeds with lots of sudden starts and stops, and taking corners fast as well, was not just a Baltimore specialty.

I doubt that the Swedes will revive the sex crime charges. Both alleged victims have asserted publicly that they were not raped. One asserted that she had been,"Railroaded by the police." The Swedish prosecutor was forced to admit that it was a rape charge that lacked a complainant.

I've long suspected bjd's point about Comey's intervention hits the nail on the head as far as the knowledge that there was no hack at all but an internal leak from DNC headquarters. Recollect the FBI were prevented from accessing their server? 'There is something rotten in the State of Denmark!'

This will drag out like Brexit and gives Assange some slim chance. I doubt Corbyn can be seen to interfere in the Judicial process should he to become Prime Minister.

That the Swedish case may be resurrected is another matter and Assange might well be found not guilty there in due course. The USA government will be doing all in its power to pressurize for his earliest possible extradition. They will have to let Justice take its course in foreign courts and who knows how that might eventually pan out? Imagine a not guilty verdict in Swedish courts and the Swedish Justice system then refusing his extradition to the USA? Hope!

I am not "whitewashing" Trump. I am suggesting that the Assange arrest is convenient for him. I understand that Trump is not going to "Make America Great Again". I also understand that he is interested in undermining the claims of his opponents, which many within the voting public still think are credible. He still has to market himself for 2020.

As for the "Deep State" concerns for self preservation. They are powerful, but not omnipotent. They know that. A pseudo democracy is easier for an oligarchy to manage that an autocracy. Americans are armed to the teeth, remember?

You can't deny that there is now a serious discrepancy between the official image of the CIA/FBI/NSA, and the one perceived by many Americans. Holy fuck, you had the President of the United States describe it as a coup d'etat recently! Somebody has to take the fall for that.

You may be thinking of "Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis" by Christian Parenti, 1999, Verso.

I find it very disturbing that prison vocabulary such as "lockdown" is now part of everyday news reports and a regular occurrence at public institutions such as schools and hospitals. I have watched Uncle Sam evolve into an overt police state (even boasting about torture, etc.) over my lifetime. I'm still not used to it, even after encounters with Uncle Sam's goons up close and very personal on more than one occasion.

It feels like the whole world is a prison, and no one knows how to unlock the gate without killing everyone inside.

Who wants to bet on the possibility that the British government will pressure (to the point of making threats) Sweden to revive the rape charges so London can dump Assange onto Stockholm at least before 31 October 2019 when Brexit finally takes place? And who also wants to bet that Swedish prosecutors will discover "new" (read: fabricated) evidence that will justify a guilty verdict?

Arkin says that it was all about Vault7. He indicates that Wikileaks would've been left alone if not for their publication of DNC emails, writing:

But then with WikiLeaks seeming cooperation (or at least servitude) to the Russian government in 2016, that very American mainstream media became more hostile to its now separated brethren, and the general view shifted within the intelligence community and the Justice Department that the organization was more vulnerable.

But the DNC leak actually appears to have been an attempt to 'get' Wikileaks/Assange by tying them to the "Russian hack". That the DNC email leak is likely to have been the work of CIA/Mossad/MI6 is indicated by:

>> the FBI failure to examine the servers makes no sense;

>> the Rich family is not credible (look at their youtube videos!) - their statements and actions are strange;

>> there was a strenuous attempt to blame Russian hacker Guccifer, and that is still the official position (AFAIK) despite:

- technical evidence that argues for a leak, not a hack, and

- the Wikileaks revelation (via Vault7) of CIA tools (UMBRAGE) to make 'hacks' look like the work of foreign organizations.

Jackrabbit is there any evidence that'Guccifer' is Russian?
Circe, Corbyn has been walking around London with the scarlet letter to which you referred on his forehead for months. The propaganda that he is 'anti-semitic" could hardly be increased. And the net result is that he is going from strength to strength; provided that he doesn't allow the Blairite Remainers to discredit Labour with the people, he looks bound to win.
The ruling class have been throwing everything, including the kitchen sink dipped in mud, at him for several years now. All that they have done is to discredit themselves and to make it very clear to the electorate that Israel is dominated by fascists.
If people stick by their principles the public, which knows how rare honesty is in politicians, rewards them.

I don't know who Guccifer 2.0 is. Guccifer is Romanian (and jailed in the US, I believe).

Mueller indicted a group of GRU agents as Guccifer 2.0. But evidence has shows that the DNC email release was from a leak, not a hack.

Many believe that Seth Rich was the source of that leak and was killed for it. But I speculate that "Seth Rich" may have been a CIA/Mossad/MI6 operative. I think the push to convince the world that it was a Russian 'hack' instead of a leak strongly indicates an attempt to set up Wikileaks.

I had heard of the Baltimore police murder, but hadn't known it was common practice. The comments here caused me to make a search, and found this 1989 article describing something which had obviously been going on for a long time. For some reason the forum link tag won't won't work with this address, so I was forced to use a tinyurl.

We have reported before that the federal government has, for some years now, begun to transfer prisoners abruptly, often in the middle of the night, from one part of the country to another, almost invariably in order to break their spirits and separate them from their support systems. Some people have begun to call this "diesel therapy"
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Prisoners will leave one prison intact, and arrive at the next one in very damaged condition, from which they may even die. This is all the more ironic considering that a good proportion of these prisoners are prisoners of conscience who are not violent. Some prisoners are sent from one prison to another every night, night afternight. Sometimes, prisoners are transferred by water (boats, etc.), in which case they may not be provided with life jackets even though they are chained and shackled.

I doubt if this will be Assange's fate. My concern for him is that he'll be mistreated in some subtle ways. The Brits have been in the Goon business longer than anyone else, and a person has to suppose they are very good at it by now. Drugs? Diet, and who knows what else they have in their little toolbox.

By the way, those with academic or other kinds of access might have a look at a long piece in a Police Journal titled "Dumping: Police-Initiated Transjurisdictional Transport of Troublesome Persons". It's pretty rough reading. (so as not to trigger any censor program, the word alterations were made by me)

With that, they ran into the station and grabbed the Negro man who was inside. Without questioning him, they shoved him into a phone booth and began beating him with their fists and a flashlight. They also hit him in the groin. Then they dragged him out and kept him on his knees. He pleaded that he had just been released from a mental hospital that day and, begging not to be hit again, asked them to let him return to the hospital. One policeman said: “Don’t you like us, n****r? I like to beat n****rs and rip out their eyes.” They took him outside to their patrol car. Then they decided to put him on a bus, telling him that he was returning to the hospital; they deliberately put him on a bus going in the opposite direction. Just before the Negro boarded the bus, he said, “You police just like to shoot and beat people.” The first policeman replied, “Get moving, n****r, or I’ll shoot you.” The man was crying and bleeding as he was put onto the bus. Leaving the scene, the younger policeman commented, “He won’t be back.”

@Jen 28 The British Prosecution service pressurized Sweden to drop the rape charges against Assange back when the charges were current. I can’t see them trying to reverse that outcome now. As political as they are even they aren’t that dumb...

Indeed Bevin (32). Despite using the strangely popular Rachel Riley to heap abuse and smears onto Corbyn, the Conservatives must be horrified that even with all the traitorous Blairites and Israeli firsters in the Labour Party, Corbyn is actually increasing his lead in the polls.
It does give me slight hope for the future when every social media is purging pro Corbyn accounts, MSM is almost 100% against him and he is still holding his own. Unfortunately, his security isn't very robust, probably by design.

I would just like to note that the operation to detain Assange happened shortly after Muller published the findings of his "investigation", disastrously disgracing the entire wing of the American establishment and those media outlets that repeated the mantras about "Russian meddling" and "Trump's collusion with the Russians" every single day. Those forces in Europe that used the fake about “collusion with the Russians” for their anti-Russian politics turned out to be disgraced too.

It was the strongest blow to the groin. All these people have become a laughing-stock, and now only the latest naive idiot will believe them. It is hardly a coincidence that Assange’s detention followed literally some days after Muller’s lethal attack (how else to call his conclusions?) on Trump’s opponents.

It is very possible that after receiving Assange on the territory of the United States, Russophobic hawks in the American establishment, who are Trump's mortal enemies, will try to use the journalist to resuscitate the fake about “collusion with the Russians” (the fairytales that “Wikileaks works in the interests of Russia” are still relevant). It’s hardly a problem for these people to force Assange to say or sign what they need. Look, Maria Butina also resisted for several months, but the methods of psychological and physical effects are very effective. To "crack" a person who has been tortured by 7 years of imprisonment is unlikely to be a difficult task. Assange can be offered "a deal that is difficult to refuse".

Now it is difficult to say how events will develop. But I would not be surprised if, after some time, Assange is used to “link” Trump with "the Russians". Again.

You say that Corbyn is "holding his own". If true, that speaks well for the ordinary citizens of Britain. I want it understood that I don't personally know a single citizen of that nation, and my remarks here are directed towards their institutions and present government.

My link is once again to Jonathan Cook, a gentleman who appears to be deeply concerned about the Assange goings-on.

I couldn't find a small section suitable for 'quoting', but my overall impression is that the UK Guardian is a trash publication, and the UK Government is right around the "Trump Level" in competency. The Trumpies may edge them out a wee bit in terms of professionalism and general morality.

The title is confusing unless it's understood that AIPAC and wikileaks have both been doing the same thing, but with different outcomes.

One of the supreme pieces of hypocrisy in Washington right now is all the politicians crying treason and death penalty on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, when many of them are up to their gills in money arranged for them from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
(....skip....)
What Steven Rosen is alleging is that AIPAC, which arranges for millions to go to the campaigns of American politicians, is in essence a Wikileaks operation, only instead of posting the ferreted-out classified material to the Web, they channel it to the Israeli government. (Of course, the Israeli government sometimes acts as a Wikileaks as well; Seymour Hersh was told by US intelligence officials that Israel shared with the Soviets some of the intel it got from spy Jonathan Pollard.)

Whether the allegations about AIPAC routine spying are true or not, Rosen and Weissman certainly did exactly the same thing Julian Assange did, and yet they are free men.

Putting stolen US information on the internet is criminal. Giving stolen US information to Holy Israel is just fine.

This was an incidental find, for I was wondering what the propaganda organs for the apartheid Jewish state were saying about Assange.

One I've previously described by my bookmark - "zionist asshole". This person is very left wing and posts reams of information about the awfulness of Trump and the importance of preserving our freedoms. But my examination of his site - both manually and by search engine - turned up NOTHING about Assange. Another hasbara site has never mentioned Assange at all. A third one had a single paragraph describing the arrest. Nothing else. My conclusion is that the takedown of Assange is very much in the interest of the Zionists, and that their propagandists have been given strict orders to keep their lips zipped about the matter. I'm assuming that the total Zionist control of the US Government is something they don't want to be exposed by wikileaks.

Not to sidetrack the topic here, but on one of those hasbara sites was a brand new headline.

"Trump warns Putin of US umbrella over Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria"

That this is being paraded around at the same time the pissant state has started attacking Syrian military installations probably isn't a coincidence. They are openly bragging now that they OWN Donald Trump.

ppl would do well to familiarise themselves with the terms of the extradition treaty between england and amerika before contributing to the mountain of ignorance on this matter.
There are substantial reasons why the empire went the swede root initially.
NZ/US extradition treaty is almost identical to US/UK one and even tho the yanks have been trying to extradite Kim Dotcom since 2012 on much more evidence than is held on Assange,he is still sloping around his Queenstown estate drinking champagne & larfing.

This UK/US extradition treaty is far more onerous than the european arrest warrant used to get him to swedeland, which could sweep Julian off to Sweden at the drop of a hat with little ability for UK courts to intervene.
This is why every neolib in westminister eager to assist amerika is playing the wimmins card to get Jules off to sweden where getting the bloke from Sweden to amerika is a piece of the proverbial. swede /amerika extradition has few judicial protections.

Secondly altho recent changes to the treaty mean charges can now be altered with the consent of the UK government post extradition, this is not simple, as one of primary terms of the treaty is that the defendant's charges may not be altered post extradition. yep contradiction in terms. Any englander judge who gets a hint that this could occur will stomp on the extradition on that ground alone.

Don't be a mug and insist Mr Assange goes to Sweden first cos if he does that will guarantee a) he doesn't ever see the light of day again and b) may even lead to him facing capital charges which would have him getting the death penalty.

“The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use ‘obfuscation,’ and that Marble source code includes a “de-obfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

“More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a ‘forensic attribution double game’ or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.”

That's a really interesting slant - that the key part of chaotic drama we're seeing has one and only one objective: to get Assange to Sweden. After his time in a UK prison for bail jumping, the Swedes decide they need to tie up some loose ends with the "rape" accusations. So kindly ship him over to us for questioning.

The minute he touches Swedish soil, the US says "give him to us", and it happens.

Your hypothesis that "the DNC leak" might have been a CIA/Mossad/MI6 operation seems to contain the unsupported assumption that this was all a single operation, by a single actor or set of actors under common management. I see this assumption all the time, as in the phrase "it was a leak, not a hack". However, former UK diplomat Craig Murray has clearly indicated that the DNC and Podesta materials published by WikiLeaks came from two different American sources with legal access to the materials they leaked, and has strongly hinted that the former was from within the DNC and the latter from within US intelligence or law enforcement; he has also stated firmly that Guccifer 2 had nothing to do with either. Given the evidence for a local download of some of the materials G-2 released, and for the evidence of contrivance in the "Russian fingerprints" in other G-2 materials, we may reasonably infer that these materials were also leaked and not hacked. Thus the counter claim to the mainstream Russia-did-it narrative should be corrected to read "All three were leaks and not hacks, but they likely each had a different origin."

In this light the suggestion that the CIA/Mossad/MI6 orchestrated the whole thing seems as likely as that Russia did.

I would suggest instead that what is more likely is that Guccifer 2 was created by someone who wanted to falsely implicate Russia for the forthcoming DNC leak of different origin. It could very well have been the CIA and/or MI6, going on the picture of "spygate" which has been emerging. Mossad could have been involved, too - they seem to have had at least a minor role in the Popadopoulos case - but in general, Israel hasn't shown the same interest in 2016 in helping Hillary or harming Trump, who has since shown himself to be completely in their pocket, whereas the same is not true of Brennan and the Brits.

"Many believe that Seth Rich was the source of that leak and was killed for it."

Unfortunately, there is a conflation of the two issues here. If Seth Rich was indeed the source of the DNC leak, then the possibility that his killing was motivated by this must be investigated. However, it would also be possible that his killing was coincidental. We really should be focused on the first issue, since far from being just theoretical, it is simply what several sources with plausible claims to knowledge have stated or implied. In comments I posted under "VIPS: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings," Consortium News, March 13, 2019, I noted:

8. Murray says that Julian Assange’s statement about Seth Rich reflects concern that Rich may have been killed on orders of someone who thought he was the leaker – whether correctly or incorrectly. Thus Murray does not deny that Seth Rich was the DNC leaker but also avoids confirming it. We must still assume some rational basis for so thinking on the part of Rich’s possible killers is being implied by Assange – such as knowledge that Rich had been in touch with WikiLeaks.

I also noted that in Binney's recent interview with Jason Goodman, Binney let slip that “the people I know, they have at least two other avenues of information coming to them that verify what [Sy Hersh] said about the FBI having the data on Seth Rich’s computer, where he contacted WikiLeaks and transferred some data and wanted money for the rest of the data. I don’t think that’s publicly known yet.” (beginning at ~8:45)

With this in mind, the following summarizes sources on the Seth Rich/WikiLeaks connection:

Julian Assange implies that Seth Rich’s potential killers would have had reason to suspect a connection between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks.

Ambassador Murray claims to know that both the DNC and Podesta leaks were “by Americans”; implies that the DNC leak was by a Democratic insider; and implies the same thing regarding Seth Rich as Assange does (without actually confirming that such suspicions were fully correct).

File-sharing entrepreneur Kim Dotcom claims that he himself was involved with Seth Rich in the DNC leak, further indicates that he had been in communication with Rich since 2014, and has offered to testify in detail to American investigators given assurances against prosecution.

Sy Hersh has attested in a recorded phone conversation to the existence of FBI knowledge from Seth Rich’s computer implicating Seth Rich in the DNC leak. And now we have Bill Binney saying Hersh’s information has been independently confirmed by people he knows.

Investments manager Ed Butowski has claimed that an acquaintance just back from London revealed to him that Seth Rich had been responsible for the WikiLeaks DNC leak along with his brother Aaron, that Seth Rich’s parents at first privately acknowledged this, and that Seth had downloaded the emails to a $56 Western Digital hard drive. He also says he believes a transaction between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks occurred on June 23, 2016 and that Rich was paid $48,115. Source. See also.

Publius Tacitus, writing at Sic Semper Tyrannis, reported a response by the NSA to a FOIA request by attorney Ty Clevenger for any information pertaining to Seth Rich and Julian Assange, in which they acknowledged having at least 15 documents totaling 32 pages, classified as TOP SECRET and SECRET. Larry Johnson recently indicated in a comment under his latest article with Bill Binney on Sic Semper Tyrannis (which may be gone, since the blog has just now abandoned Disquis - I haven't checked) that Clevenger is representing Butowski.

On the Fox News story by Malia Zimmerman which was since removed by Fox, Publius Tacitus comments that "It is unfortunate that the Fox News story intermingled the speculation that Seth’s murder was a deliberate hit with the actual factual statements identifying him as the source of the DNC emails." And he is elsewhere quoted by Mark McCarty as saying: "No, Sy [Hersh] was not the source for the Fox report. Two of the sources are closely tied to Julian’s lawyer."

Despite the CIA's Marble Framework capability being interesting in itself, and despite the report that this misattribution tool had been used at least once in 2016, I personally doubt very much that it was actually the source of the "Russian fingerprints" in the files released by Guccifer 2 when that persona first made its appearance on June 15, 2016.

1. Although I am not a technical expert, I believe that those who have analyzed these files - notably Adam Carter and The Forensicator, have by now put together a reasonable sequence of steps by which these "fingerprints" were actually introduced - and I do not see from this where Marble Framework would fit in.

2. The overall picture is one of a hasty operation initiated in response to Julian Assange's announcement on June 12 that WikiLeaks would be publishing material on Hillary Clinton in the near future. Thus the WP story of the 14th and the appearance of G-2 on the 15th seem intelligible as reactions to this announcement, with the purpose of damage control. While one could argue that this timeline leaves plenty of time to simply pick up the phone to call Langley and ask "What can you to to help us?", my impression is that G-2 was less "off the shelf" consultation with a technical department than addressing a political problem of the moment. Of course, it is possible that there was a bit of both.

3. Isn't the purpose of Marble Framework that of disguising hacks, causing them to be attributed to other actors than the real ones? Is it really meant to be used in a disinformation operation meant to create the public impression that something that was in fact a leak was actually a hack by a foreign adversary?

Have you heard the fairy tale that
those uber 'Chinese hackers' who managed to
hack into pentagon, MIC..whatever, somehow
were so sloppy to leave a trail every time, all the way back to their gawd damned den,
PLA Unit12345 [something like that] !

It is very possible that after receiving Assange on the territory of the United States, Russophobic hawks in the American establishment, who are Trump's mortal enemies, will try to use the journalist to resuscitate the fake about “collusion with the Russians” (the fairytales blah-blah....

Oh for Fuchs sake! Trump's Attorney General whom Trump called EXCELLENT in the same breath as he threw Assange under the bus signed off on this arrest warrant for Assange! Quit with the conspiracy hallucinations!

Yeah, Trump colluded. He colluded with Russian Zionists!

(These West Bank Russian squatters are so spoiled by Trump they're going berserk trying to protect their messiah.)

@18 The Headless Prophet - "The permanent deep state management [do this and that] and the circus continues!

I suggest we need to do with your fourth paragraph what you've done with the first three: make the top players as uncertain of consensus and security as all those they think they control.

There is no reason to believe that the "permanent deep state" you cite is any more coherent or settled than the other layers of the game you illustrate.

Throughout this Assange affair in these comments, what rings the least true of all is the concept that one force is above it all and controlling the whole show, and will remain constant throughout the play. To repeat, this doesn't ring true. Human life isn't that seamless.

There's a reason that "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown", and there is no more uncertain a position than to be wearing the crown on any given day. History shows that Praetorians can install Caesars, that powers behind thrones can be stamped on by the throne itself, that even the populace can have its moment on rare occasion, and that there is honor neither among thieves nor among the rich and powerful.

Maybe the circus does continue. And probably the clowns and the ringmaster must unite to deceive the audience during performance time, because the alternative is unthinkable. But it seems most likely to me that they in turn are plotting to usurp each other's glories and steal their powers, or to change the performance, or to follow a different ambition.

So, just as the performance each time is cobbled together by the agreements of the hour, so too are the alliances of power and privilege and money, according to the exigencies of the day.

Finally, I think that money and privilege and power work to de-humanize, so that in this way, formerly human players can agree to a unified script. But when they lose their humanity, they also invite the caprice of the gods. History can have its own ideas.

So, rather than believing we are powerless, we are each and all of us left with ideals still worth pursuing, and the hope to reach them. And if overthrowing the whole damn circus is that ideal, nothing says this is not possible.

Before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gained asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, he and his British legal team asked me to fly to London to provide legal advice about United States law relating to espionage and press freedom. I cannot disclose what advice I gave them, but I can say that I believed then, and still believe now, that there is no constitutional difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.

If the New York Times, in 1971, could lawfully publish the Pentagon Papers knowing they included classified documents stolen by Rand Corporation military analyst Daniel Ellsberg from our federal government, then indeed WikiLeaks was entitled, under the First Amendment, to publish classified material that Assange knew was stolen by former United States Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from our federal government.

So if prosecutors were to charge Assange with espionage or any other crime for merely publishing the Manning material, this would be another Pentagon Papers case with the same likely outcome. Many people have misunderstood the actual Supreme Court ruling in 1971. It did not say that the newspapers planning to publish the Pentagon Papers could not be prosecuted if they published classified material. It only said that they could not be restrained, or stopped in advance, from publishing them. Well, they did publish, and they were not prosecuted.

The same result would probably follow if Assange were prosecuted for publishing classified material on WikiLeaks, though there is no guarantee that prosecutors might not try to distinguish the cases on the grounds that the New York Times is a more responsible outlet than WikiLeaks. But the First Amendment does not recognize degrees of responsibility. When the Constitution was written, our nation was plagued with irresponsible scandal sheets and broadsides. No one described political pamphleteers Thomas Paine or James Callender as responsible journalists of their day.

It is likely, therefore, that a prosecution of Assange for merely publishing classified material would fail. Moreover, Great Britain might be unwilling to extradite Assange for such a “political” crime. That is why prosecutors have chosen to charge him with a different crime of conspiracy to help Manning break into a federal government computer to steal classified material. Such a crime, if proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would have a far weaker claim to protection under the Constitution. The courts have indeed ruled that journalists may not break the law in an effort to obtain material whose disclosure would be protected by the First Amendment.[.]

Two observations: As Times are a changing.

unfortunately, the Pentagon Papers episode was 1971. On 12 December 2000, Bush vs. Gore the Supremes trashed the Constitution, (that weird relic) by stopping the count! The election dispute should have been taken to Congress as per the weird relic.

"Wikileaks acquired Vault 7 in late 2016 or early 2017"
Circe @ 10 makes a great point. Manning was in prison under heavy surveillance. DOJ needs to rethink what is a weak case.

But how would they have traced that back to Russia except by some convenient clues left behind? That would require some people (or an organization) with some expertise in break-in attribution (which the Marble people have). Even better, to make it 'stick' would require an actual break-in (not planted evidence).

But we now know that it was a leak, not a hack. So the attribution to Guccifer 2.0/amorphous Russians is just BS altogether. Either Seth Rich (assuming it was him) was working for an agency that wanted to set up Wikileaks or an agency was tried to turn the "leak" into a "hack" after the fact. My guess is the former for various reasons like the lack of credibility of the Rich family and the strange "murder" of Seth Rich. I think Rich, from a nice Jewish family, would've been happy to help the Agencies or at least willing to cooperate to avoid jail. No need to murder him (except as a convenient way to end his covert assignment).

In any case, the DNC leak/hack was definitely an attempt to tie Wikileaks to "Russian meddling" in the election so Arkin is spinning a yarn when he says that the Agency wasn't interested in Wikileaks until AFTER the DNC leak/hack - and probably WELL AFTER as he suggested that they altered their stance toward Wikileaks only when the saw that public opinion toward Wikileaks had changed.

Russia's top diplomat has argued that the world is losing faith in the United States as a global leader and that the international community has sought a more diverse approach to global decisionmaking.

But we are supposed to believe the source because of Arkin's 'courageous' decision to leave MSNBC, right? After something like three decades of shoveling the Empire's propaganda shite, he finally grew a conscience?

Policy-makers had already made up their minds. But they also knew that on some things (the war’s aftermath) that the intelligence might be right and on others (WMD) the intelligence might be wrong. They might have chosen to ignore counter evidence but they also operated from this fundamental truth: they might be right and they might not be. So it is precisely up to the policy-makers to take the intelligence and “use it” if you will to make bigger decisions because there are too many cases on both ends of the spectrum. So it isn’t intelligence that determines things (it rarely does).

There's more head-spinning gobbledygoop at the link, if you are interested.

Headless and Ghost Ship, Trump's whitewashers, are real busy now. Told ya you undermine the Assange story bringing the Russia crap into this! Lucky for us, while Trump's whitewashers are busy scrubbing his knickers; Trump is soiling himself again and again. He's a real poopypants! More work for his whitewashers. Sigh...:
...
The REAL A-hole.
Posted by: Circe | Apr 13, 2019 4:43:39 PM | 21

There's an aspect of the legal status of POTUS decisions which you seem to be overlooking. POTUS traditionally acts on info provided to him by his appointed 'experienced advisors' and 'experts' in the Bureaucracy. He thus ALWAYS has available the fall-back position of 'realising' or 'deducing' that he has been mislead by his advisors and thereby blame them for a blunder and overrule/ reverse the consequences of bad advice.

The last thing they want to do is give whistleblowers a proper trial because that would give defendants the opportunity to declare their motives and discuss specific leaks. Thus, God forbid, more truth may come to light, and the US justice system is NOT about establishing truth.

Assange, like Schulte, will get the American Gulag treatment: a combination of bullying in solitary confinement (possibly subjected to MKULTRA type drugs) and trial by media, smeared as a narcissistic sex offender and a treasonous cyber-terrorist spying for the Commies, until he is coerced enough to accept a non-disclosure plea deal.

I have been trying to understand why now and think I have a couple of ideas

In case it is not obvious by the number of comments to the last posting/thread, the Assange issue is a guaranteed headliner for as long as necessary. Maybe a bad example but think of the OJ Simpson trial that was televised and ran of for months. The Assange situation has the potential to HOG the social narrative for at least a year.....now that is a long spinning plate.

Think of all the shit can go on and be waved in front of the TV addicts during this period.

The 2nd idea is that someone decided that it was time to end the power of Assange and take whatever hit that entails because the revelations might be small potatoes compared to whatever else is scheduled to be happening at that time......I say happening at that time because more conflict is in the pipeline as a given, correct?

Step back and look at all the geo-political plates that are spinning currently and ask yourself how many are manipulated events/situations......all of them. The elites are manufacturing a global crisis situation with lots of fog and glitter to obscure the Rape 2 Protect proposals that will be coming forward as solutions to all this manufactured fear.

Somebody 58. The Labour Party did not already cave. The minority Blairite wing of the Labour Party has come out and said Sweden should get first bite at Julian if charges are laid. Corbyn has not waivered, yet. Expect the media to come out with more smears trying to connect Corbyn to Russia and “anti-semitism. The former mud is more likely to stick than the latter. People are sick of the anti-semitism smears. It’s coming from the same Labour MPs wanting to send Julian to Sweden. The tide of U.K. opinion is running against them. They have exposed themselves for what they are duplicitous paid hacks for Israel, like their hero, still to be charged war criminal Tony Blair. The Russia smears have slightly more credibility with the public, but not much. They appear to have managed to shut Corbyn up about Skripal though. I am waiting for Corbyn to ask May where the Skripals are in Crime-ministers questions in Parliament. That will show what he’s made of.

Assange better hope and pray he gets to serve his sentence for jumping bail and Corbyn's leadership chances aren't sabotaged because that MCC Prison where Joshua Schulte, the guy who supposedly passed on Vault 7 to Assange is being held, sounds like a horror hell hole where one prays for the death penalty. El Chapo's being held there awaiting sentencing.

The way Schulte describes the conditions there, there's no way he won't make a deal that Justice will use against Assange. Meanwhile Trump washes his hands and vacations in Mar a Lago and his whitewashing crew are here to wipe his ass clean.

Time will tell.
All I see is Trump inviting the ratbags from the ideological sewer to make fools of themselves in Public - and the ratbags grabbing every opportunity with both hands, and milking each one like there's no Tomorrow.
And Trump can just walk away from each and every (advised) gambit - which was the point of the comment to which you object.

The time it will take for the extradition case to move through British and EU courts

Will he still have access to EU courts? I am trying to avoid looking into the "niggling niceties" of GB-EU deals, but let's suppose there is a hard break during the next few month ending in a hard break, or whatever the standard term is?

I understand that European Law was one of the standard or the return to British law was one of the standard arguments of the Brexiteers.

Time is on Julian's side. His birthchart (July 03, 1971 at 15:00 at Townsville, Australia) posits the Moon at 07Scorpio42 in the Twelfth House, of which "suffering under imprisonment" is one possible manifestation. Assange's Moon is however trine to his natal Sun at 10Cancer38 in the Eighth House of secrecy and espionage, a favourable solunar angle suggesting that the renown journalist need not endure interminable misery as a consequence of his great calling.

Just over a year from now, in May 2020, transiting Uranus will oppose Assange's Moon, indicating a sudden release from bondage. There are other supporting aspects in play as well in this same period, including transit Saturn trine natal Saturn (which emphasizes the deal-making side of justice); transit Jupiter conjunct natal Eleventh-House Pluto (which crowns a social mobilization with victory - or at least tempers brute power with a udicious point of view); transit Pluto sextile natal Ninth-House Mercury (indicating the intercession of a powerful authority in relation to a legal matter); and finally transit Mars trine natal Moon (expressing the physical act of turning the key in the lock).

Under threat of further Vault 7 disclosures, the authorities may decide to release Julian on compassionate grounds, so that he may attend his ailing mother in Australia.

Wishful thinking can easily insinuate itself in this case, but the astrological picture for May 2020 is in accordance with the timeframe proposed in the present article.

Hold in there, Julian. There are millions outside the prison walls who visualize you as a free man.

@ Fast Freddy 37. Whilst he was in the Equadorian Embassy? Too much time has passed for new ‘ victims ‘ to be ‘ found ‘. They might make that crap stick in the U.S. but people’s attitudes and attention spans worldwide are a bit less compromised elsewhere in the world.

"Based on the analysis of Kondratieff cycles and cycles of evolution of the world political system, and also on the basis of empirical analysis of current events and trends with a high (approximately 90%) probability it can be argued that in the coming years will break out the "hot" local war, in which Russia will be forced to take a direct and active participation."

Lie #2: Let’s all recall that, for months, we were told the US didn’t want Assange, that “the only barrier to him leaving the embassy was pride”. WikiLeaks claims that US had sealed indictments waiting for Assange were dismissed as “conspiracy theories”.

Not true. Not any of it. The secret indictments were leaked, proving WikiLeaks correct. (Ecuador is – shocking – claiming that they weren’t aware there any extradition orders for Mr Assange before they released him to the UK police. This risible assertion has gone totally unchallenged in the mainstream media.)

I imagine that USA/CIA was deeply disturbed by Vault7 (which provides a thin element of truth to Arkin's assertion) but they were always after Assange/Wikileaks. The Swedish charges and the DNC email leak/'hack' were almost certainly attempts to set up Assange/Wikileaks.

This seems to be what Corbyn says
"“If there are allegations which Julian Assange needs to answer of sexual issues, sexual attacks that may or may not have taken place in Sweden, then it’s a matter for the courts to decide.

“But, I do think he should answer those questions. My objection was to his extradition to the United States because I do believe that WikiLeaks told us the truth about what was actually happening in Afghanistan and in Iraq.”

I doubt Sweden wants the political embarrassement. I history is anything to go by, plans have been made up to the arrest but not any further.

To be sure, the investigation documented numerous contacts between Trump campaign figures and Russia, a willingness on the part of the campaign to accept help from Moscow, and no indication that the campaign told the Kremlin to keep out of an American presidential race.

No criminal conspiracy was documented, according to Barr. But tantalizing court statements by members of Mueller’s team and evidence disclosed in various prosecutions by the special counsel had suggested on several occasions during the 22-month investigation that a different conclusion had been possible.

Frank Montoya, a former senior FBI official with extensive experience in counterintelligence investigations, said the words “did not establish” are commonly used in national security cases as language merely ruling out a chargeable offense.

@Jackrabbit #57 See my earlier post - now number 48 (and my post previously numbered 49 is now numbered 50) - the appearance of which on the site was delayed presumably because of the number of hyperlinks it contains. Hopefully, it will be clearer why I think the actual DNC leak to WikiLeaks was a totally separate thing from the Guccifer 2 "leaks" - and from the Podesta leak to WikiLeaks as well. It's time we stop repeating the conflation between three different sets of material inherent in the phrase "it was a leak, not a hack" and start helping others to achieve clarity on this point as well.

Leander - The European Court of Human Rights is not connected to the EU. Europe has had some form of extra-territorial legal system in place I believe since the end of WWII. In many respects, the EU is an economic/political outgrowth of this "regional" judicial system.

If Assange loses in the British courts it is expected he will appeal to this court.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is a regional human rights judicial body based in Strasbourg, France, created under the auspices of the Council of Europe. The Court began operating in 1959 and has delivered more than 10,000 judgments regarding alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Count me among the skeptical for what a Corbyn win might mean as regards JA. I would hope this would mean at least a stay of execution (figuratively speaking--I hope), assuming Corbyn will weather the ordeal he's sure to face and pull off a win. However, he has insisted publicly that Assange answer for the charges leveled at him in Sweden, which could mean...What? My impression was that this was a dead-end, save that the dropped case got revived in an attempt to make a bogus bail-skipping charge stick, retroactively. My sense is he's keeping an escape hatch open for extradition or something else in case JA gets too hot to handle. Maybe I'm making too much of something, but I'd welcome clarification of this.

Let us leave the Ecuadorian shyte aside, except that we could replace the adjective “corrupt” with “moreno” in honour of the deserving El Presidente. Thus moreno policeman and moreno judge, the UK is full of them.

The episode with Assange has clearly shown that US, UK and Sweden are ripe for “non-violent” regime change. Elections do not solve the deep ingrained regime corruption issues such as these. Such action could come from two totally different sources but both are keeping totally silent. The first source are Russia and China, not a peep. Imagine a reverse situation, where Russia or China were doing what the Western regimes out of control are doing!

The second potential force for good are the armed US people. I am more understanding why they are silent. However, in the medium to longer term, they are much more likely to do the “non-violent” regime change than Russia and China. This is why the rotten regimes are desperate to disarm the population, just like the sheeple in so many other Western countries.

As expected, there are armies of paid trolls online and we are swimming in a septic tank similar to the main stream media. The better skilled trolls obfuscate the main issues instead of attacking Assange, there is a varying quality of bull paid from our taxes.

It appears that Assange’s head will find its designated place on the castle gate of our feudal masters, he will be martyred and thus become one of the history’s greatest heroes. But, as so many others have pointed out here, it is much more cost effective to rule the people by sweet bullshit then by fear. It is the weakness of the rotten regimes that they have to engage in suppression, blatantly against all the rules that they profess for others, which forces them into openly criminal behaviour. Remember this the next time a moreno policeman or moreno judge tells you that you are breaking THE LAW. Ask them who’s law, who owns this law that you are breaking? Tony Blair’s law? Hilary Clinton’s law? Moreno-ed law?

Maybe this is like when planes crash and the first question should be who/what was on it?, though it rarely is.
That is to ponder if what we are talking about is just 'smoke' to obfuscate what we aren't?. Any of the more astute barfly's care to hazard a guess? Some here have hinted at this and its probably better to get it out as possible venues of investigation by barflies and host alike.

This feels alot like the white bronco right when Rwanda was getting real.

Barrett Brown adds some interesting context to Assange's arrest - "I’ll explain what makes the Assange indictment dangerous. Part of it has to do with a fact buried in another indictment that the press at large will never, ever report." - https://twitter.com/BarrettBrown_/status/1116366849669779456 Btw, Barret's Twitter thread is quite revealing.

A couple of other facts that may be of interest from the conservative voices weighing in - Trump early in his presidency had Mike Pompeo meet with Bill Binney regarding his research into the DNC files. Sean Hannity did go to the embassy and interview him. Hannity, like him or not, is the only conservative voice out there who has continuously questioned Assange's predicament and believes it is unjust.

Also, the Conservative Treehouse writers are connecting Mueller/Rosenstein behind Assange's arrest. What this means is anybody's best guess but it seems Rosenstein's second memo to Mueller, which expanded his probe, included cyber crimes.

To hoarsewhisperer #64 and to circe responding: Here is a partial list of Trumpstein's advisors which I have taken from an essay by Jeffery St. Clair. BTW, does not include loudmouth Pompeo and disgusting Abrahms and of course T'rump's appalling son-in-law. Given this list I don't think one can say that poor T'rump has mistakenly chosen a few bad apples. I think it's a plan - as much as anyone as mentally deranged as Trump can plan. Hey listen to this "Texas is big. I mean it's REEEALLY big. Almost as big as my ego. And I'm the king of the world." - D Trump. cheers.

+ Public Citizen has kindly provided this field guide to the Trump administration…

The conflation of the three "leaks" is something that the media has done. Differentiating among the three is not crucial to my argument that there was an effort made to tie Wikileaks to the "Russia meddled" accusations. Doing so, in fact, would also further those "Russia meddled" accusations.

All of which links back to the main goals of the Deep State in the 2016 election: Elect a MAGA nationalist (as Kissinger had called for in 2014) and initiate a new anti-Russia McCarthyism.

Your remarks indicate a willingness to accept that Seth Rich was a real person. I am suggesting that it is possible (even likely) that he was an operative of an Intelligence Agency and that his death was faked.

You write:

I would suggest instead that what is more likely is that Guccifer 2 was created by someone who wanted to falsely implicate Russia for the forthcoming DNC leak of different origin. It could very well have been the CIA and/or MI6, going on the picture of "spygate" which has been emerging. Mossad could have been involved, too...

This is exactly in line with my theory and I think many people now see it this way. What others have not been expressed (to my knowledge) is the overall picture of a election that was rigged to achieve certain goals, principally: election of a nationalist and initiation of a new McCarthyism.